Topiltzin

Topiltzin was an Aztec scribe and an illegitimate son of Moctezuma who attempted to revive the Cult of Tonantzin during the Spanish colonization of Mexico in the 16th century.

Biography
Topiltzin was born in Tenochtitlan, Aztec Empire, the illegitimate son of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma. In May 1520, he was the sole survivor of the Massacre in the Great Temple, during which he hid under a corpse, only to find that his mother had been murdered by the Spanish. By 1526, he attempted to preserve the Cult of Tonantzin, but a Spanish force discovered the sacrifice of a beautiful Aztec princess and captured Topiltzin. He was taken to Hernan Cortes, whose mistress Isabel Moctezuma revealed that Topiltzin was her half-brother, and Cortes was persuaded to spare him; however, he decided to have Friar Diego de La Coruna convert Topiltzin to Christianity. He was brutally converted and baptized as "Tomas", and he was forced into a monastery. By 1521, Tomas and Isabel had begun to forge Cortes' correspondence with Emperor Charles V, and the two of them made love in the monastery in an attempt to perpetuate the Aztec race. Friar Diego had Isabel confined to a dungeon as he took it upon himself to convert Tomas, who fell into isolation and illness. He later had a vision which revealed to him that the mother goddess Tonantzin was the same as the Virgin Mary, and he hallucinated about the merger of Aztec and Spanish imagery. He was genuinely drawn to the statue of the Virgin Mary as a substitute for all that he had lost, setting out on a personal crusade to conquer her, fuse with her, and seek redemption.